Bedouins Slam Israel's Desert Development as 'Nakba in the Negev'

Bedouins Slam Israel's Desert Development as 'Nakba in the Negev'

Article excerpt

The Bedouins of the southern Negev desert have volunteered for
the Israeli military, worked as trackers along the Lebanese and
Egyptian borders, and gone along with various Israeli development
projects that have required them to give up their nomadic way of
life and relocate.

But they feel betrayed now by the latest Israeli government
project, a $5.6 billion initiative called the Begin-Prawar plan that
will free up space for Israeli development of the Negev by
relocating Bedouins in the area if it is approved by the Knesset
after it returns from recess next month.

The Israeli government has slated for eviction 40,000 Bedouins in
"unrecognized" villages throughout the southern Negev, which are
ineligible for basic services such as electricity, water, or
sanitation because they are on disputed land and were built without
state permission.

Some of the villages will be granted status as formal towns,
entitled to state and municipal services including schools, sewage,
and healthcare facilities. Residents of the other villages will be
resettled into seven existing approved townships.

The government says the move will improve Bedouins' standards of
living and describes it as an opportunity for integration into
mainstream society, while many Bedouins say that being disconnected
from their traditional agricultural land and lifestyle will mean
cultural extinction.

The draft law will "make it possible for Bedouin children to leap
in time into the midst of the 21st century," said Benny Begin, a
former minister and one of the creators of the plan

Bedouins have historically been one of Israel's weakest
populations, facing discrimination and disproportionally high rates
of illiteracy and unemployment. In 2007, more than two-thirds of
the Bedouin in the Negev lived below the poverty line, more than
four times that of Israeli households, according to the National
Insurance Institute.

Half of the 200,000 Bedouins of the Negev - descendants of semi-
nomadic tribes - have already voluntarily relocated to urban
centers, where crime and poverty are rampant, and, in some cases,
running water and electricity are still lacking.

But many Bedouins, who have worked for the state and for Jewish
farms in the region, see it as a betrayal and a violation of their
rights as Israeli citizens.

"It's an exile plan," says Bedouin Atiyeh el-Ghassan, who
represents the "unrecognized" villages in the Beersheva district
court.

He says that Bedouins were not consulted during the planning
process, and that as Jewish agricultural communities are growing
throughout the Negev, traditionally nomadic and pastoral Bedouins
are being forced to urbanize. Many Bedouins say such projects have
left their way of life and identity in tatters.

Refusing to be relocatedThe Bedouin village of Al Araqib has
steadfastly refused to be relocated. Since 2010, Israeli forces have
razed homes and uprooted olive groves here 57 times, claiming that
residents are illegal trespassers, according to long-standing land
disputes. The village's only surviving structure is a century-old
Islamic cemetery.

Hakmeh Abu Medeighim lives in a shoddy wooden tent next door. She
and a handful of other families have refused to leave their
ancestral lands, strewn with rubble from their homes that were
razed, rebuilt, and razed again. Though pine trees stand where their
olive trees once were, they pledge that they will die in this harsh
desert "even if mourners will have no water for the ritual prayer,"
says Al Araqib's elder, Sheikh Sayyah al-Turi.

He has been waging a losing battle in municipal courts to prove
land ownership, using pre-1948 land deeds - rejected by Israel - as
his only legal documents. …